fast and furious

Oops another late entry.

Past week felt like a never-ending bullet train ride, not just because of our Facebook project but also the amount of news and information that I read.

Last week's lecture saw Microsoft representatives introducing HTML5 and Windows Phone 7 to us. It seems to me HTML5 is more of playing catch-up to all the new technologies that have surfaced in the past decade and left HTML4 behind.

(Or maybe I was the one left behind.)

In recent years, the Web has moved beyond simple text and images, and we see the rise in popularity of rich media content on the web, like audio, video, graphics and animation, and it is getting difficult for the good ol' HTML to support these new content.

Besides rich media content, mobile devices are also gaining in popularity as manufacturers decide that 'phones' can do more than just calling and sending messages (I still remember the hype when WAP, then later GPRS first came out), like GPS for instance. Surfing the net was no longer confined to desktops and laptops; different devices with different sizes are getting the ability to surf the Web.

Finally, there is the point where both rich media content and mobile meets each other. The question arises on whether mobile devices, with their less superior hardware, are adequately equipped to run Flash.

And so there is where HTML5 comes in, to allow the native embedding and running of rich media content and the integration of mobile technologies like GPS.

Personally I think HTML5 is cool, and is the way to go. That is, until the browsers sort out all their differences.

Then there was Windows Phone 7. The history was that Apple came up with iOS and iPhone, Google came up with Android, and everyone was unhappy with Windows Mobile 6.5. Hence Microsoft threw the whole thing out of the window and developed WP7 from scratch.

At first glance, WP7 seems different from iPhone and Android, with the UI based around tiles, instead of icons (actually, aren't those tiles just bigger icons?). While the front end UI is radically different from the competition, the underlying architecture is still similar, which the a core OS supported by small apps written by third party developers.

Beyond that, Microsoft promises greater integration and consistency with the Windows platform, for example, the UI. As with most other new technologies, there is the novelty there. But whether they will be successful or not, no one can say for sure.

Besides the lecture on Monday, there were also news like Steve Jobs resigning from Apple, and HP causing chaos by deciding to stop making tablets and sell their existing inventory at $99 apiece.

In the tech world, its really all fast and furious.